Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden meets with his family amid pressures to step down after debate

      by

      Joe Biden was meeting with his family on Sunday, a discussion believed to include talk about his political future even though it was already scheduled to take place before his calamitous presidential debate on Thursday with Donald Trump.The meeting at Camp David came as pressures mounted on Biden following the vast fallout of the debate, in which his halting performance highlighted his vulnerabilities in a close election and invited calls from pundits, media and voters for him to step aside.Insiders told NBC News that it would ultimately be the president and first lady Jill Biden making any pivotal decisions about his candidacy for a second term of office, although the couple’s children and grandchildren were present at the weekend retreat.“Any discussion about the campaign is expected to be informal or an afterthought,” a source told the network, seeking to dampen speculation over the purpose of the gathering.Similarly, an administration official also sought to dismiss reports that the Biden family summit was set to discuss him potentially standing down.“The premise of the [NBC] story is not accurate,” the official told a media huddle at New Jersey’s McGuire air force base.The Camp David meeting, he said, “was public in our guidance before the debate. It’s been on the schedule for weeks. There is nothing more to it.”The official, however, did not deny the subject would come up. NBC, meanwhile, reported that Biden’s mood in private was “humiliated” and “devoid of confidence” following the debate, and that he was leaning heavily on his family for support.So far, at rallies and events following the Thursday debate, the Bidens have shown no sign of changing course, painting the debate as a one-off bad day and doubling down on 2020 election success against Trump.“I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said at a more energetic North Carolina rally on Friday, addressing the widespread criticism of his Thursday performance. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.” He highlighted Trump’s long litany of lies and misinformation during the debate.His campaign has similarly brushed off criticism of Biden’s debate performance as a media frenzy.“It’s a familiar story: Following Thursday night’s debate, the beltway class is counting Joe Biden out,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Biden campaign, said in a memo. “The data in the battleground states, though, tells a different story.”The Associated Press reported a fraught call among Democratic National Committee members and his campaign staff.“I was hoping for more of a substantive conversation instead of, ‘Hey, let’s go out there and just be cheerleaders,’ without actually addressing a very serious issue that unfolded on American television for millions of people to see,” said Joe Salazar, an elected DNC member from Colorado, who was on the call.“There were a number of things that could have been said in addressing the situation. But we didn’t get that. We were being gaslit.”While some Democratic lawmakers have privately expressed concerns and hope Biden will drop out of the race during the convention, they have largely remained steadfast in public support for Biden’s campaign.A number of senior party allies spread across Sunday’s political talk shows to defend him, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, Congressman Jim Clyburn, and New York governor Kathy Hochul.“You can have a rough night, you can have a bad night, but the morning after defines you. And what I saw less than 24 hours after the performance the night before was Joe Biden himself at his best, energetic, fully alert,” Hochul told MSNBC’s The Weekend, referring to Friday’s North Carolina rally.Pelosi, also speaking on MSNBC, turned her criticism on Trump, while conceding that “it was not a good night” for Biden.“How can you have a legitimate debate when somebody is totally lying? You have to completely dispel their falsehoods,” she said.“Why do we talk all about Joe Biden? [Trump] is old, he doesn’t have a stream of thought that is logical, and nobody says anything about that. You saw on one side of the screen integrity, concern for people. On the other side, you saw dishonesty and self-serving lies.”In other events over the weekend, Vice-President Kamala Harris also sought to reiterate support for Biden, and nix rumors that she would be seeking to replace him.“In the Oval Office, negotiating bipartisan deals, I see him in the situation room keeping our country safe,” she said during a speech in Las Vegas on Friday. And at a fundraiser in California on Saturday she sought to assuage donors, who have reportedly been shaky in their support of the president since Thursday.“Because we’ve been in this fight before, I say with full confidence, we will win,” Harris said. “We will know what we stand for, so we know what to fight for.”And Biden himself appealed to his donors this weekend in an array of events in New York and New Jersey. “I promise you we’re going to win this election,” he said.Meanwhile, in flash polls conducted after the debate on Thursday voters have continued to show low confidence in the president and his future. Biden’s approval rating has been weakening since he took office and concerns about his age and handling of crises both at home and abroad after Thursday are under more scrutiny than ever.The path forward for Democrats is riddled with uncertainty. None of Biden’s possible replacements have proven to have more support than the president himself, and the threat of a Trump presidency and its impact on key issues of domestic and foreign policy leaves little room for error.Sunday’s internal meeting comes on the back of calls with Biden’s senior leadership team. But the conversation he has with Jill Biden and his children and grandchildren could hold more insight on the future of this election year. More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Most voters want Biden to step down, but don’t agree on suitable alternative – poll

      by

      A majority of voters want Joe Biden to stand down following his dismal debate performance, yet aren’t convinced there is a suitable alternative Democratic candidate, new polls have found.In a Morning Consult poll, 60% of respondents, Republicans and Democrats, said the president should be replaced by his party for November’s election, while another 11% were unsure.But the same poll also found that Biden’s popularity, initially at least, appeared to be unaffected by his stumbles and gaffes during Thursday night’s debate with Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump.He retained a one-point advantage, 45-44% over Trump, the same margin as Morning Consult found the day after the former president was convicted in May on 34 charges of falsifying business records to try to influence the 2016 election.Another apparent glimmer of hope for the incumbent came in a separate Data for Progress post-debate poll that found no indication any other Democrat would perform better against Trump in November.While Biden trails Trump 48-45 among respondents, all other leading Democratic figures would perform the same or worse in a head-to-head match-up. Prominent names that voters were asked about included vice-president Kamala Harris (45-48), transport secretary Pere Buttigieg (44-47), California governor Gavin Newsom (44-47) and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (44-46).A YouGov poll, meanwhile, found respondents overwhelmingly thought Trump won the debate, and that 30% of Democrats believed somebody other than Biden would give the party the best chance of winning in November.The figure rises to 49% among all US voters, including Republicans and independents. Conversely, only 13% of Republicans believe their party’s best chance of victory would come by nominating somebody other than Trump.One of the most devastating polls for Biden, however, was a Democracy Corps survey of Democratic-leaning voters, who used words such as “confused”, “frail”, and “dementia” to describe the president’s debate performance, Politico reported.Voters were surveyed before and after the debate. While 65% said they would vote for Biden before the debate, only 54% said he won the debate once it ended, according to the survey.Harris, 59, is the obvious choice to replace Biden, if he stands down, and has been the subject of increasing speculation in the days since the debate.But Biden allies have insisted the president is standing firm and will contest and win the election, despite anguished calls from senior party officials and media heavyweights, including the New York Times, for him to step aside.According to the Data for Progress poll, most voters consider Biden, who will be 82 at the start of a second term, too old to run again. 53% said they were concerned about his age, and physical and mental health, while 42% said they were more concerned by Trump’s criminal conviction, other upcoming trials and threats to democracy.A CBS poll released Sunday, recorded in the two days following the debate, appears to echo the findings of the other surveys. It found 72% of registered voters did not believe Biden possessed the mental or cognitive health necessary to be able to fulfil the obligations of office, up from 65% at the beginning of the month.A breakdown of the Morning Consult poll, meanwhile, shows that almost half of Democrats, 47%, want Biden out of the race, compared to 59% of independents, and 74% of Republicans. The figure among Democrats rises to 50% when limited to those who actually watched the debate.That poll also suggests there is no clear replacement for Biden. Harris leads the field, but with only 30% support of Democratic voters, with Newsom the only other potential candidate in double figures, at 20%.Others listed include Buttigieg at 9% and Whitmer at 5%, with a string of other Democratic state governors, Andy Beshear, Roy Cooper, JB Pritzker and Wes Moore at 3% or below.Since the debate, Newsom has forcefully defended Biden and insisted he will not challenge the president. Harris has also expressed confidence in Biden, stating after the debate that the November presidential election “will not be decided by one night in June”. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump loyalists plan to name and shame ‘blacklist’ of federal workers

      by

      Armed with rhetoric about the “deep state”, a conservative-backed group is planning to publicly name and shame career government employees that they consider hostile to Donald Trump.This “blacklist” of civil servants, which will be published online, is intended to advance Trump’s broader goals, which, if elected, include weeding out government employees and replacing them with loyalists.The group behind the list is the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), which was founded in 2020 and describes its mission as “working non-stop to expose the left’s secrets and hold Biden accountable”. A 2022 New Yorker profile described AAF as a “conservative dark-money group” and “slime machine”.In recent years, AAF has focused its efforts on derailing Biden’s political appointments. Now, according to a press release, the AAF is getting to work on a new mission: “Project Sovereignty 2025”.Backed with a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, an influential rightwing thinktank, AAF will compile information, including social media posts, about civil servants they suspect will “obstruct and sabotage a future conservative president”. They plan to publish dossiers on those non-public facing individuals, starting with the Department of Homeland Security, and expose them to scrutiny.“WE ARE DECLARING WAR ON THE DEEP STATE,” AAF wrote in a post on Twitter/X earlier this week.News of the project has reportedly sent alarm bells ringing among the civil service community, and it’s the latest sign that Trump and his allies are seeking to wrest control of Washington DC, which they believe has been overrun by their opponents.The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union (and which has endorsed Joe Biden), described Project Sovereignty 2025 as “an intimidation tactic to try to menace federal workers and sow fear”.“Civil servants are required to take an oath to the Constitution,” they wrote on X. “Not a loyalty test to a president.”Project Sovereignty 2025 has also drawn comparisons to the anti-communist blacklisting techniques employed during the McCarthy era.Donald Moynihan, a political scientist and the McCourt chair of Georgetown University’s McCourt school of public policy says those comparisons are valid, and that AAF’s plans reveal a “deep animus towards state actors who are seen as disloyal to the party and party ideology, and a desire to punish those actors”.During the first Trump administration, Trump and his allies made no secret of their animosity towards non-political government workers who they believed were working internally to impede his policies, particularly on immigration. Those suspicions have been increasingly rolled into nebulous conspiracies about the “deep state” – a cabal of government officials with a sinister agenda.“Trump used to talk about ‘The Swamp’, and that rhetoric has become sharper and more negative since it’s merged with discussion about ‘the deep state’,” said Moynihan. “This is also because he views the state as a threat to him personally.”Moynihan says it’s also important to consider Project Sovereignty 2025 in the context of broader patterns of intimidation against individuals across institutions, and across all levels of government.“Librarians, teachers, professors, public health officials, election officials, who were previously anonymous, and left to do their jobs, now have to worry about being doxxed, being accused of being disloyal and being part of the deep state,” said Moynihan. “I think that is really quite new.”“Project Sovereignty” would lay the groundwork for Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025”, a 900-page blueprint for Trump to follow if he’s elected. Project 2025, which explicitly makes “Christian nationalism” a priority for Trump, also seeks to reorganize the federal government. Critics have labeled it “authoritarian” in nature.One of Project 2025’s top priorities is the implementation of “Schedule F”, which would reclassify tens of thousands of career civil servants as political appointees. This move would allow Trump to conduct mass dismissals and replace those employees with his supporters.Trump introduced Schedule F via executive order in October 2020, which was later rescinded by Biden. Earlier this year, the Biden administration ushered in additional protections to “safeguard federal employees from political firings”. Trump has vowed to reimplement Schedule F on his first day in office, “I will shatter the Deep State,” he said in a statement last year.On the surface, it would be easy to perhaps dismiss AAF as some fringe outfit steeped in “deep state” conspiracies. But that’s not the case. AAF is run by Tom Jones, former legislative director to Republican Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson. Jones also ran opposition research for Senator Ted Cruz’s unsuccessful bid for president in 2016.“This isn’t just some crank in his basement,” said Moynihan. “This is someone funded by the Heritage Foundation, who has worked with Republican senators, and is part of the broader Republican mainstream operation.”Jones and AAF have not responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.Some of AAF’s tactics in recent years offer some insight into what Project Sovereignty 2025 could look like. For example, they haven’t just targeted Biden’s high-profile nominees for cabinet and court seats. They’ve also gone after lesser-known political appointees, whose relative obscurity leaves them particularly vulnerable to smears, which are then published to the website bidennoms.com along with their photos.The AAF also has a track record of disproportionately targeting women and people of color. According to the New Yorker in 2022, more than a third of the 29 candidates they’d singled out were people of color, and nearly 60% were women.“Those sorts of lists create more intimidation,” said Moynihan, “More fear, and more consequences when these actors have access to power to potentially fire people, in addition to intimidating them.” More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Should Democrats stay the course or replace Biden? | Robert Reich

      by

      If anyone were to doubt the menace of Donald Trump, they had only to watch his performance in Thursday night’s debate.His bullying lies were not just lies – they were frightening opposites of the truth, uttered with the vigor and certainty of someone who has now mastered the dark art of demagoguery.Joe Biden had good and often detailed answers to the questions put to him, but the debate was never going to be about the president’s answers. It was always going to be about his age.Sadly, Biden’s stiff, halting, withered delivery, coupled with his slack-jawed expression and frozen stare when not trying to form sentences, made him seem not just old but on the decline.In the wake of Biden’s performance, many Democrats are in a panic. Some believe it’s urgently necessary to replace Biden with another candidate.But there are many problems with trying to replace Biden at this point.For one, Biden would have to willingly give up the nomination in order to release delegates already pledged to him.I have a hard time seeing how this could happen, unless Jill Biden, along with others of his closest and most trusted advisors, and Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries, all teamed up and told him he must exit the race.A second problem is the public doesn’t know any other Democrat nearly as well as they know Biden, and it would be difficult to introduce someone to the public at this late date without them being defined by Donald Trump, the Republicans and Fox News in the worst possible ways.The only people I can think of as possible nominees are Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Gavin Newsom and (my personal favorite) Sherrod Brown.Out of all of them, Harris is obviously best known because she’s vice-president, but if the criterion is who can beat the former president, it’s far from clear she’s the best choice. Yet, if it’s not Biden, a failure to nominate Harris might upset lots of Black people, women and younger voters.The Democratic national convention is only seven weeks away. An open convention, in which potential candidates duke it out, would be a chaotic mess (anyone remember 1968?), particularly in comparison to what’s expected to be Trump’s seamless and worshipful inauguration by the Republicans.There are also not-so-pesky details about money and organization. All of the money now lodged in Super PACs dedicated to Biden would have to be redirected. All of the national, state and local party machinery, advertising, and internet capacity now designed to get out the vote for Biden would have to be totally redesigned.I’m not saying it’s impossible to replace Biden at this juncture, only that it would require extraordinary deftness and collaboration on the part of the leaders of the Democratic party, who are not always known for their deftness and collaboration.I give it ten days. By then, we’ll know whether Biden will be replaced.In the meantime, you can bet that his campaign, his advisors and Jill Biden are doing whatever damage control they can – which centers on showing Biden to be vigorous, energetic and on top of his game.On Friday, at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, surrounded by cheering supporters, Biden nearly shouted:
      I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious. I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down you get back up.
      Watch the clip, if you can. In it, Biden shows the kind of energy and vitality he lacked in the debate. These are not the words or actions of a candidate contemplating an emergency exit from the race.But nor does Biden’s behavior in Raleigh explain what the hell happened in the debate. And frankly that’s what troubles me more than almost anything else.Biden is smart. He can show energy and vitality, as he did in Raleigh and at the State of the Union.But he can also reveal something else, as he did at the debate – a man who in many respects seems older than 81 years, who has trouble walking and speaking, and who, at least in those times and moments, doesn’t seem to stand much chance of being re-elected president of the United States – even when his opponent is a twice-impeached convicted felon, pathological liar and dangerous sociopath.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      American media heavyweights tell president: it’s time to quit

      by

      Amid a howling chorus of derision over Joe Biden’s substandard debate performance against Donald Trump, one voice seemed to resonate more powerfully than others.At 6.15pm on Friday – roughly 19 hours after the two presidential candidates left the stage in Atlanta the previous evening – the verdict of the New York Times’s editorial board dropped online to the newspaper’s subscribers.The judgment was devastating. The US president, the board forcefully argued, had presented such an alarming spectacle of aged frailty that the best thing he could now do for the country he had served for more than half a century was to withdraw from the race and allow his Democratic party to choose another candidate.The newspaper long venerated as “the old Grey Lady” of American journalism pointed out that Biden had presented himself as the figure best positioned to defeat the threat to democracy represented by Trump – and acknowledged that he had successfully done so in 2020.“But the greatest public service Mr Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election,” it intoned.“As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency … It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes.”The judgment evoked memories of February 1968, when Walter Cronkite, the magisterial CBS anchor, used his television platform to openly question the US military commitment in Vietnam after the Vietcong launched an offensive that led to guerrillas storming the US embassy compound in Saigon. Watching, President Lyndon Johnson – another Democratic president, to whom Biden is sometimes compared – reportedly said: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”Just over a month later, Johnson withdrew from that year’s presidential election, announcing he would not seek a second term.Times have changed since 1968; media has become more fragmented, with newspapers and, arguably, television less influential. Biden’s response to the editorial – if he has even seen it – is unknown.Yet the article echoed equally eviscerating critiques from other weighty and normally friendly sources – some of them so respected by the president that their views cannot have failed to wound.Similarly pleading with Biden to stand down were his favourite columnist, Tom Friedman – also of the New York Times – who wrote that he had wept as he watched the debate from Lisbon.Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe – a programme the president is known to revere – had an identical message, all the while saying that he “loved” Biden and calling his presidency “an unqualified success”.The highly respected, and liberal, website the Atlantic published six articles on Friday, all arguing for an end to the Biden candidacy.View image in fullscreenThe media cacophony reflected shock with the persona that Biden, 81, presented in the debate. Rather than allay nagging voter concerns that he was too old to run – his campaign’s goal when it pressed for the event – he seemed to confirm them with his octogenarian mien. He looked infirm and sometimes stuck for words, in contrast to Trump, who – although just three years younger – presented a picture of fluent, if mendacious, loquacity.Biden came out swinging on Friday, appearing much more upbeat at an election rally in North Carolina, admitting that “I don’t debate as well as I used to” but telling a cheering crowd: “I know how to tell the truth … I know how to do this job. I know – like millions of Americans know – when you get knocked down, you get back up.”Messages of public support poured in from Democratic luminaries including Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, vice-president Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom, the governor of California.Yet the defiantly positive messaging is unlikely to soothe fears that reach into the upper echelons of the Democratic party and even into the White House itself.Several officials in the presidential West Wing were so demoralised by Thursday’s debate that they opted to work from home the following day, Politico reported, expressing their fears on text threads.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreen“We were all a bit nervous about the debate, but no one thought it was going to be as bad as it was,” one West Wing staffer was quoted as saying. “The vibes are really bad. People feel demoralised.”The acid test may be whether demoralisation extends to Democratic donors – a sensitive area, given that Trump has recently overtaken Biden in campaign fundraising after lagging for months.The early signs are hardly encouraging. The debate triggered waves of panic among Democratic mega-donors in Silicon Valley, where some have emailed and texted each other about how to persuade Jill Biden, the first lady, into talking her husband out of running.One tech-industry donor who had planned to host Biden in a fundraiser reportedly cancelled the event because of the debate.The negative drumbeat has focused minds on alternatives if Biden does step aside. Two frontrunners would be Harris and Newsom, yet both have vulnerabilities. Harris, who would be the first woman of colour to be a main party’s presidential nominee, is plagued by low approval ratings barely higher than Biden’s, while Newsom’s term as governor of California has drawn criticism over high taxes, surging homelessness and rising housing costs.Other likely names are Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, both leaders of key swing states the Democrats need to win to keep the White House. Another possibility – the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker– a billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel chain fortune – has won attention for his acerbic attacks on Trump.But with Biden apparently determined to stand his ground, it remains to be seen if the current discontent is strong enough to transform such speculation into reality.For that to happen, drastic action may be required, such as an eminent group of Democratic party elders approaching the president and persuading him to withdraw.Alternatively, one or more credible candidates could declare a public intention to challenge him – potentially throwing the power of nomination to delegates at the Democratic national convention in August, an event that was expected to rubber-stamp Biden’s candidacy.Either scenario would take political will, yet neither is far-fetched, according to seasoned commentators.If either come to pass, Biden may end up reflecting that the New York Times’s withering verdict was indeed his Walter Cronkite moment. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Could Kamala Harris be a winner for the Democrats if Biden steps aside?

      by

      Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance left Democrats so panicked some are searching for an alternative to replace the 81-year-old president as the party’s standard-bearer.Biden has given no indication that he intends to exit the race, and his campaign has flatly dismissed the suggestion. But that has done little to silence critics who are openly questioning whether Biden is the right person to take on Donald Trump, a figure the president – and his party – view as a grave threat to American democracy.In the unlikely scenario Biden decides not to run, the most obvious choice to replace him would be his 59-year-old vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. But it would not be automatic – and other candidates would likely challenge Harris, who has suffered her own low approval ratings, for the nomination.Already some Democrats are looking past the vice-president at other possible contenders – Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, California governor Gavin Newsom and Maryland governor Wes Moore.It’s a sign that Democrats have yet to fully embrace Harris as Biden’s heir apparent.“To even discuss Biden stepping down while COMPLETELY IGNORING THE VP … is a serious look into how we see the importance, capacity and seriousness of women of color,” writer Tanzina Vega, said on X.Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is the highest-ranking female elected official in US history and the first Black and first Asian American to serve as vice president.Democrats, traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, rallied behind Biden in 2020 over a younger, more diverse and progressive field of candidates that included Harris. As a candidate, Biden promised to be a “bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders, which many interpreted as commitment to serve one-term and before passing the baton to Harris.But when the time came to make a decision, Biden argued that he was still the Democrat best-positioned to beat Trump.For the past three and a half years, Harris’s barrier-breaking vice-presidency has divided Democrats. Negative press, some of it self-inflicted, compounded by sexist and racist attacks, and a challenging policy portfolio weighed on public perception of the former California senator. Nearly 50% of voters have an unfavorable view of Harris, according to 538’s polling average, compared with the roughly 40% who view her favorably, figures that are comparable with Biden’s.Despite a rocky start to her tenure, Harris has eased into the role, especially since becoming the administration’s leading voice on abortion rights. On Monday, Harris marked two years since the second anniversary of the US supreme court decision that overturned Roe v Wade with a fiery warning that Trump would not hesitate to further restrict women’s reproductive rights in a second-term.Nodding to her background as a prosecutor, the vice president declared: “In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty.”Harris’s clear defense of abortion rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue, stands in stark contrast to Biden. During Thursday’s debate, Biden fumbled an attack on Trump over Republican bans on the procedure, pivoting bizarrely to immigration and raising the case of a young woman murdered in Georgia.Moments after Biden finished the debate, it was Harris who came to his defense first in a pair of interviews. On CNN and MSNBC, Harris spun his performance, saying voters must look at the last three-and-a-half years of accomplishments and not just at the 90-minute debate. Harris conceded that Biden had a “slow start” but insisted he finished “strong.”“I’m talking about the choice for November,” she said on CNN. “I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”In a sharp back-and-forth, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper pressed Harris about calls for Biden to step aside.“I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three-and-a-half years of performance,” she said, emphasizing his legislative and executive achievements he’s pulled in his first-term.At a rally in Las Vegas the following day, Harris doubled down on her support.“In the Oval Office, negotiating bipartisan deals, I see him in the situation room keeping our country safe,” she said, adding that the election would not be decided by “one night in June”.The Atlanta debate was the first of the election cycle, with a second scheduled in September. The Biden campaign has agreed to a vice-presidential debate between Harris and Trump’s eventual running mate, but the terms have not yet been to confirmed.In a hypothetical matchup against Trump, Harris performed roughly on par with Biden, trailing the former president by six points in a February Times/Siena poll. Biden trailed Trump by five points in the same poll. Meanwhile, the poll found Harris ran stronger than Biden with Black voters, though worse with Hispanic voters and men.Biden’s age has long been an electoral challenge. But his shaky debate performance shocked even his staunchest supporters. At a rally on Friday, Biden acknowledged his stumbles, but insisted he was still the best candidate to defeat Trump.“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said at a post-debate rally in North Carolina. “I know I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”But mounting concerns about Biden’s mental acuity have drawn even greater scrutiny of Harris, particularly from the right. Republicans have sought to make Harris a boogyman, with Nikki Haley warning during the GOP primary a vote for Biden was a vote for “a President Harris”.With the convention scheduled for mid-August in Chicago, and the formal nomination process to take place virtually at some point before that to meet an Ohio ballot deadline, many Democrats have said there is not enough time to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.Former South Carolina lawmaker and Democratic commentator Bakari Sellers, who endorsed Harris in the 2020 primary, said wishing for an alternative to emerge at this stage was futile.“You’re not nominating Gretch or Gavin or Wes over Kamala. Stop it,” he wrote on X, adding: “Choice is Trump, Biden or couch. I choose Joe.” More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      The stakes of the US election are higher than ever | Sidney Blumenthal

      by

      I saw western civilization pass before my eyes as Joe Biden drowned.“Putin is waiting for Trump,” John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has said. When the presidential debate turned to foreign policy, the former president made an apparently startling revelation. He implied that he had a previously unknown conversation with Vladimir Putin before his invasion of Ukraine, perhaps in late 2021 or early 2022. According to Trump, Russia’s president discussed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. “When Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my – this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream,” he said. That dream, of course, is the conquest of Ukraine as the restoration of the major piece of the collapsed Soviet Union after the cold war.Biden, overprepared to hit his voluminous talking points, was not listening closely. He did not pick up on Trump’s astounding claim: “I talked to him about it, his dream.” The president’s response was accurate and so concise his words jumbled: “And listen to what he said when he went in, he was going to take Kyiv in five days, remember? Because it’s part of the old Soviet Union. That’s what he wanted, to re-establish Kyiv. And he in fact didn’t do it at all. He didn’t – wasn’t able to get it done. And they’ve lost over – they’ve lost thousands and thousands of troops, 500,000 troops.” Abruptly, Biden ended.He had the time, but did not explain the meaning. He bollixed what he wanted to say about Putin’s effort to occupy Ukraine into “re-establish Kyiv”. Biden did not draw any conclusion. He had not listened closely to Trump’s winding patter. He didn’t sift through the word salad to find the nugget of gold. He did not expose Trump’s worship of Putin, whom he “idolizes”, according to Fiona Hill, the Russia expert formerly on Trump’s national security council, who also wrote that Trump believes Ukraine “must be part of Russia”. Trump shares Putin’s “dream”, to make Russia great again. He aspires to be an unfettered strongman like Putin, dictator “for day one”. That is why, as Bolton says: “Putin is waiting for Trump.” Trump’s campaign is the essential linchpin of Putin’s strategy. Without Trump, he faces endless winter. Trump is his indispensable useful idiot.Biden’s whiff on this or that exchange was more than isolated missed opportunities. His painful performance showed him trying to spew out his numbers, often missing the main point. He often countered without making any argument. It seemed like a PowerPoint presentation missing the closing slides. At times, he lost the plot. “We beat Medicare,” he said confusedly. His acuity and agility were evanescent.Yet sometimes Biden hit his mark. He tore into Trump’s low character, “the morals of an alley cat”, though unfair to cats who don’t choose to be in the alley. He called out Trump’s lies, though accounting for them would have consumed every second in every response.But Biden’s physical appearance was more than a problem of optics. His stiffness was accompanied by a frequently vacant look. He was not the Biden of less than four months ago with his firm and adroit handling of his State of the Union address in which he spontaneously talked down his Maga hecklers.Biden cannot hope for a recovery through a future performance. There is not another State of the Union. The acceptance speech at the Democratic national convention will be read through a teleprompter. There will almost certainly not be a second debate with Trump. What’s in it for Trump? He has already banked what he needs, a gift beyond his wildest dreams, not to mention Putin’s. Trump will not lend Biden a second chance. And would Biden’s handlers risk it?Biden’s halting image will cast a shadow over any message he wishes to make. He will not be able to deflect the fake videos because of the real debate. He will not be able to have his aides explain his capability as chief executive without doubt falling on him.Biden’s age had been set aside until the debate. His accomplishments are the result of his political skill, experience and knowledge. For the Democratic party, Biden was a political necessity. The center held around him. His renewed candidacy prevented a tumultuous free-for-all. But his ability to run on the platform he has built through three and a half years has been severely undermined in 90 minutes.Biden has run for more reasons than his grasp of the state of the party. He understands the state of the world. Biden has held together the center of the western alliance. He decided he would run again because he was the crucial leader at an unprecedented, perilous time. His premise that he must win the presidency to sustain the west against the overarching menace of Putin and his sidekick Trump has been the fundamental reason for his second candidacy.Post-debate, Biden soldiers on. He flies to fundraisers. He campaigns. He is overcoming another obstacle in the pattern of his story, his self-image up from underestimation. But if Biden is not politically viable, the stakes not only remain but are even higher than ever. The cause is always greater than the man.
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More